Derbyshire County Council Labour Cabinet members today approved a paper to resume funding the Derbyshire Unemployed Workers Centre (DUWC), despite prior legal advice from the authority declaring the organisation a political group and therefore not eligible to receive taxpayer funding. The grant totalling nearly £40,000 will be given to the organisation that famously produced T-shirts that celebrated the eventual death of Margaret Thatcher in September 2012; months before her actual death on 8th April 2013. The DUWC attracted nationwide condemnation, even from senior trade union officials such as Brendan Barber of TUC who described the slogans as “sickening”.
Derbyshire Labour famously refused to condemn or distance themselves from the DUWC, and one former Ilkeston County Councillor Cllr Brian Lucas said he would “raise a glass on the day she died.” Indeed some Labour councillors, including the current Leader of the Council Cllr Anne Western, granted them money from their Community Leadership funds, a practice that was stopped because the organisation was deemed to be political.
The current grant from DCC is ostensibly to provide welfare advice to unemployed people and help them secure benefits and “improvements to benefits”. The DUWCs main focus is to provide this advice within the northeast and Chesterfield area of Derbyshire. Similar funding was provided by DCC up until 2010, when a review was undertaken and found that such provision was inequitable. Following the review funding was redeployed more fairly across the county via the Citizens Advice Bureaux to provide these services for all of Derbyshire’s communities.
In the paper presented to Cabinet it is claimed the DUWC have created a new body to carry out its political campaigns and “assurance” has been given that the grant will not be used to fund political activities. However, their website appears not to make any distinction: http://www.duwc.org.uk/
The two attached documents, gleaned from the DUWC website today indicate that their campaigning activities have not abated.
Cllr Andrew Lewer, Leader of the Conservative Group said,
“In 2010 we ensured fairness and equity in the provision of advice services for unemployed people and those on benefits throughout the County, not just in Labour heartlands. Labour have clearly reverted to type and have chosen to use taxpayers money to support a group that has a left-wing political and campaigning agenda that, despite flimsy assurances, has not left those militant roots behind. The public purse is not there to support Labour’s friends.”